Vocal Warmup Techniques
My research focus is about vocal techniques and how they help with your warm up.
There are many different vocal warm up techniques which improve your singing and protect your vocals from being damaged. Warming up your vocals before singing is important because it stretches your vocal cords and helps to clear your throat for singing. It also helps with your breathing and it relaxes your muscles which puts less strain on your voice.
I learnt some warm up techniques from my old singing teacher when I had singing lessons. I would warm up before I sang every time to make sure I wasn’t straining my voice or damaging it in any way. This allowed me to learn how to look after my voice and keep it in good condition. Some warm ups I learnt where such as:
The Phantom Of The Opera which is where you say them words over and and over in a melody slowly getting higher pitched and faster. This improves your range, how long you can hold notes and how fast you can sing which helps with breathing technique and learning to control your voice.
ABC or 123 which is where you go up and down he alphabet or numbers getting higher and lower. A or 1 would be a low note and B or 2 would be slightly higher. Instead of just going up the alphabet and down again, I worked on my control by going up and down after each letter or number such as, A, ABA, ABCBA, ABCDCBA and so on. This helped my control and my range.
These are some links that I have found:
https://www.schoolofrock.com/resources/vocals/9-best-vocal-warm-ups-for-singers
On this website I found out that warming up your voice doesn’t just protect your voice from being damaged but it also can help extend your range comfortably if used over time. I learnt that humming is a very good warm up and is widely used because it doesn’t put a lot of strain on your voice cords. I also found that when you sing your jam is supposed to be lower than your jaw when you are talking, this is because you make room for the sound to move freely and it allows your vocal folds to stretch and create different pitches.
Vocal warm ups are not only singing techniques but also breathing techniques. Your posture is extremely important while singing. One of the most common breathing techniques is breathing through your diaphragm. It is most common to breathe through your chest during daily activities and talking but singing requires breathing from the diaphragm. This gives your voice more power and more control which is important in singing. It also protects your voice and stops you from straining your voice.
I also learnt that it is essential to cool down your voice after singing to keep your voice strong and relaxed. You can cool down your vocals by using the same warm ups that you use before singing.
This video demonstrates some warm ups and how they are performed. From this video I learnt different warm ups that can help my voice and allow it to sound better and prevent it from being damaged by singing.
I also learnt why some exercises are used and what they help with and how they affect and warm up your voice. This is such as humming, I learnt from this video that humming is a very good warm up and helps with your pitch as well as warming up because when you hum, your pitch is mostly correct and it means you can learn from humming what pitch you are singing in.
https://www.voicelessons.com/blog/warmups/10-important-vocal-warm-ups/
From this website I found out that when you warm up your voice you actually stretch and relax your muscles in your throat and voice and it allows you to reduce the risk of tension and voice loss. Also this website gave me many different warm ups that I can use and what they do for the voice. This can allow me to know exactly how I’m using my voice and how it is affecting my voice.
This video focuses on scales which is a warm up that helps your voice warm up and also improves your range. I learnt that scales can go from high to low and low to high which allow the vice to practice it’s range and riffs as well. I found this video really helpful to learn my scales and warm up my voice in a way that can also improve my range. I will be looking at more videos like this to learn more about different types of exercises and how they are performed.
Overall, from this research I have learnt new ways to warm up my vocals and protect my voice which I will use every time before singing.